Late this past summer, a construction project began at Indian Point that will allow the fuel to be pulled out of the pools. But itâ€™s not going to Yucca. The government says Yucca wonâ€™t be ready until 2010. Executives in the nuclear industry say a more likely date is between 2015 and never. So instead of traveling to Nevada, Indian Pointâ€™s fuel is traveling about 100 meters, to a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. On a late-summer day this year, a backhoe tore out maple and black-walnut trees to make way for a concrete pad. Beginning next year, the first of a planned 72 six-meter-tall concrete-and-steel casks will be placed there, a configuration that adds storage capacity and thus allows the twin power plants to keep operating. Though they provide a hedge against a worst-case fuel-pool meltdown, these casks are merely another temporary solution. The fact that theyâ€™re needed at all represents the colossal failure of the U.S. Department of Energyâ€™s Yucca plans and technology.

A British company claims to have found the "holy grail" of the nuclear energy industry - a solution to the problem of radioactive waste disposal.

Amec, the London company that cleaned up Ground Zero in New York and rebuilt the Pentagon after the September 11 attacks, says that its latest process will enable nuclear waste to be stored safely for 200,000 years - longer than the radioactivity will last.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace organised the protest near Turin to publicise that the waste -- the last of 13 convoys -- would eventually return to Italy. They say the government has no policy on what to do with it.

"The attempt to export spent nuclear fuel abroad is a way of playing for time, a subterfuge to leave for the next generation the burden of taking decisions which are morally and politically beyond the wit of the current governing class," a Greenpeace statement said.

Are you trying to tell me that it is impossible to dig a 1 square mile hole in the ground to a depth of 1000 feet? You build that, add 50 foot cement walls on each side, throw that sh*t in there, and cover it over again with a 50 foot wall. But this thing out in area 51 or some place like that.

Even better, do that and don't tell anyone where it is! We never need to know. Why is it so hard to dig a hole and throw the nuclear waste in there?

Oh, but Tyler, the radiation! THAT'S WHAT THE 50 FOOT THICK WALLS ARE FOR.

But Tyler, eventually the stuff will leak out. First off, I don't really care. The point of putting it in area 51 is that NO ONE lives there. If nuke waste was dangerous if you lived within 1000 miles of it, everyone would be dead by now.

Oh, but Terrorism, the terrorists will take it and make dirty bombs! Not going to happen. How can anyone break up 50 feet of cement without anyone noticing? And the hole is in Area 51, you walk in there, they kill you.

The question is, what does "eventually" mean? 100 year? 1000 years? Beyond the next 3-4 generations, my level of care drops to the "who won American Idol?" level. Everything breaks eventually, but won't the stuff stop being dangerous "eventually?"

And what if it breaks and leaks out everywhere in 100 years? Wouldn't it be easier to have it all in one place. The tribal chiefs of the time can put up a sign that says, "Don't go past this point. There are evil spirits who will suck out your soul." All of the little people will look at that and go, "While I guess I'd better not go any further."

If anyone walks to far and gets killed, WELCOME TO NATURAL SELECTION! The stupid die of radiation created by the stupid people who came before them who didn't think to put up more signs. I'm willing to allow 1% of humanity to die of radiation (the upper limit for this assuming everyone tries walking into the Nevada desert) if it means hanging on to civilization for another 10-15 years. If I'm willing to make that sacrifice, you can bet the "important" people are willing to do it.

...vs. how many millions of tons of carbon dioxide up in the atmosphere where we can't get it back...?

I'd rather have a big concrete hole full of radwaste.

BTW, 2000-year-old Roman concrete is still holding up nicely in ancient Roman roads and buildings. The lucky Romans just happened to have natural mineral deposits that were equivalent to today's portland cement, i.e. add sand and gravel and water, and you have concrete. And in modern times the techniques for making the stuff impervious have been known since the 1930s.

By the end of 2000 years, either we've managed to render the radwaste inert, or we've found a way to get more energy from it, or we've gone back to agrarian tribalism, "bad spirits - stay out!" signs included.

All the noise about Nuclear wste is just that raw noise. Nuke waste is not bad or harmful, or difficult to store, but it is difficult to get anyone to allow it near them.

Both the USA & Russia have large tracks of land that are already contaminated beyond use from nuke bomb testing. The US mushroom fields are a cratered wasteland that are already beyond belief or human use. No need to go to great expense to build underground silos for storage & then worry about ground water ingress etc. Just put it in a transport vessel & take it to these places that are already wasted. Then store it in suface bunkers like we do with the nuke bombs & conventional ammo.

This is safe, secure, inspectable, maintainable etc etc. To every endeavour there is a risk, if people want the lights to keep working, then a bit of residual radiation is not a problem. Shit I saw lambs born crippled & disformed here in the UK after Chynoble (sp?) which means that I was also breathing the contamination. Most of the UK population is still here & that level of exposure was higher than what you'd get from spent fuel in storage !

Wait till the lights go out & see how many people object to nuke power then !

The roller coaster is still climbing, but it's near the top now !
Where there's a WAR there's a WAY

Weeell, I think there's too much hysteria over stuff
like nuclear waste. Yeah, it's nasty stuff, but it's not
that bad. And quite a bit of it can be recycled in breeder
reactors.

It's becoming increasingly clear the danger from CO2
buildup outweigh any problems with nuke waste, IMO.
People can't 'see' CO2, so they tend not to care about it.

Also, coal fired electric plants (which are being built in
record numbers) spew more naturally occuring radioactivity
from their smokestacks then a nuke plant ever does.
Plus you've got the problem of all the heavy metals
(especially mercury) from coal fired plants ending up in
the food chain. Mercury is so bad that they now (here
in the midwest) recommend people limit the amount
of fish they eat from local lakes.

And all the soot and particulate matter from coal fired
power plants is the primary cause of 'global dimming'.
And haze and smog. As an amateur astronomer I like
good clear weather, something we're seeing less and less
of.

Tyler_JC wrote:Are you trying to tell me that it is impossible to dig a 1 square mile hole in the ground to a depth of 1000 feet? You build that, add 50 foot cement walls on each side, throw that sh*t in there, and cover it over again with a 50 foot wall. But this thing out in area 51 or some place like that.

Even better, do that and don't tell anyone where it is! We never need to know. Why is it so hard to dig a hole and throw the nuclear waste in there?

Oh, but Tyler, the radiation! THAT'S WHAT THE 50 FOOT THICK WALLS ARE FOR.

But Tyler, eventually the stuff will leak out. First off, I don't really care. The point of putting it in area 51 is that NO ONE lives there. If nuke waste was dangerous if you lived within 1000 miles of it, everyone would be dead by now.

Oh, but Terrorism, the terrorists will take it and make dirty bombs! Not going to happen. How can anyone break up 50 feet of cement without anyone noticing? And the hole is in Area 51, you walk in there, they kill you.

Easier answer - vitrification. Store the waste indefinetly in glass. That's what we're doing at Hanford right now. So far as I know, you would end up killing yourself before you could extract enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. It doesn't leak, it doesn't require 50 foot walls and it only has to use one of the most abundant resources on earth - silica.